Anyway, I tend to plan my route to be backroads that avoid cities, so I typically need to get off my route to get gas, so this one particular feature, is very useful to me, and is perhaps one small way that the 350 is more useful than the Montana. YMMV.

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Yes, the Montana does allow you to add "Via Points" to a route then continue the original. To do so, start Navigation, then go back to "Where To" and you'll see this screen:

Select a "Via Point", then "Go" and it will be added, as seen in this route:

The gas 'Via Point" is in the middle, then the rest of the original route is listed.

do you have to have that via point already as a poi or something or can you do a search for a gas station.I guess you have to stop navigation to do that anyway?And i mean on the Montana not a 3x0,sorry for teh OT

do you have to have that via point already as a poi or something or can you do a search for a gas station.I guess you have to stop navigation to do that anyway?And i mean on the Montana not a 3x0,sorry for teh OT

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You can add anything as a Via Point on the Montana - it even has a button called "Use Map" so you can mark a location on the map and add that as a Via Point.

Does the 350 not have zoom controls? Can you turn off auto-zoom on the device? I know some of the Nuvis I've owned have not had zoom options and that's frustrating.

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Um... Not sure I understand, so forgive me if I answer incompletely. Yes, there are zoom controls - if I touch the screen, I get a + and a - and can use those to zoom in and out. There is also a setting for auto-zoom that can be turned on or off.

Yes, the Montana does allow you to add "Via Points" to a route then continue the original. To do so, start Navigation, then go back to "Where To" and you'll see this screen:

Select a "Via Point", then "Go" and it will be added, as seen in this route:

The gas 'Via Point" is in the middle, then the rest of the original route is listed.

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In your scenario above, how would I have "found" the gas station? Am I correct in thinking (based on the quoted post) that as I am merrily following a route, that I hit "where to" and search for fuel, and then go back to navigation as you describe, or...?

Um... Not sure I understand, so forgive me if I answer incompletely. Yes, there are zoom controls - if I touch the screen, I get a + and a - and can use those to zoom in and out. There is also a setting for auto-zoom that can be turned on or off.

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That's good. As you can see the Mntana has those + and - controls right on the screen so it wasn't obvious that the 350 had them too.

In your scenario above, how would I have "found" the gas station? Am I correct in thinking (based on the quoted post) that as I am merrily following a route, that I hit "where to" and search for fuel, and then go back to navigation as you describe, or...?

In your scenario above, how would I have "found" the gas station? Am I correct in thinking (based on the quoted post) that as I am merrily following a route, that I hit "where to" and search for fuel, and then go back to navigation as you describe, or...?

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You're missing one step. While navigating go back and select "Where To", select "Set Via Point", find what you want through fuel services (or whatever), click the item, choose "Go" on its screen, then that becomes a Via Point in your original navigated route.

You're missing one step. While navigating go back and select "Where To", select "Set Via Point", find what you want through fuel services (or whatever), click the item, choose "Go" on its screen, then that becomes a Via Point in your original navigated route.

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Ah, I think I see. Glad it can be done. I will have to practice that a few times to get it in my head.

On the other hand, the 350 does it so simply and easily, I wish the Montana team would incorporate that same code.

When following a route on the 350, and you decide it is time to seek gas or food or whatever, you go to "where to?" and then pick the item, e.g., fuel. A list of places selling fuel appears. Click on one to select it, and that item will display a "Go" button. Click the go button to go there, and you will then be shown the following screen:

Click "Add to Active Route" and you are done. I see this as more intuitive and therefore easier than having to specify a type of navigation element right after clicking "where to".

Edit: I just ran through the process on both units (350 & Montana) and my opinion now is that it isn't really very different between the 2. However, my preference remains how the 350 does it, for simplicity's sake. YMMV.

Edit: I just ran through the process on both units (350 & Montana) and my opinion now is that it isn't really very different between the 2. However, my preference remains how the 350 does it, for simplicity's sake. YMMV.

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Looks to me like the Montana saves a step in that it automatically assumes if you say Go while you're currently navigating, you want the Via Point inserted into the current route. But to each his own...

Looks to me like the Montana saves a step in that it automatically assumes if you say Go while you're currently navigating, you want the Via Point inserted into the current route. But to each his own...

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Yeah, it asks if you want to make a new route or add it to the one you're currently following, so it does give you the option of not including it into the current route. I discovered the feature quite accidentally on a ride last year up into the Catskills for a weekend with other riders. I had plotted a really small backroads route for most of it and got to that point of nearing empty where I was getting a little nervous and decided to do a search for a gas station. Turned out that gas was relatively far off (for this part of the country) so I was happy to have that easy way of integrating my gas stop into the route.

A while back you had wanted to edit the dashboard on your 350, http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=826532
I take it you did?
What you are displaying here seems fairly typical of a Nuvi screen. My Zumo 220 looks very similar to what you are showing.
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o> </o>
The Zumo 450/550 have Next Turn in the lower right hand corner and I like that, I can see it better in bright sun. It just shows the mileage. Also I like the way Next Turn (s) are calculated in the 450.
With the Nuvi there will be 3 miles to the Next Turn, turn a page, 1 mile to next Turn. So, the second turn is 4 miles from where you are at.
My Zumo 450 tells me this directly and I have found that more useful then what my 220 or a 350 will display. <o></o>

Well, I tried editing the dashboard files a few different times, and I could never get any results. Either I was not editing the correct files, or there was some other thing I was missing. So, no, I never was able to make the changes I wanted to. May go back to it when I get some time. What you're seeing in the image posted is one of the canned Zumo dashboard choices.

Based upon the discussion in the big Montana thread where Mr. DLH62C had created a couple of routes to test the 50 shaping or via point limit of the Montana, I decided to try something similar with the 350, to see how it would handle things.

I used DLH62C's 52ViaPoint route and deleted some of his points and added more of my own, not that that really matters.

What I learned is that the 350LM appears to have a 29 via point limit in a route, BUT the interesting thing it does is that if you put a larger than 29 via point route onto the unit, and tell it to navigate, it will tell you that the route exceeds 29 via points and then automagically split it into 2 routes, keeping the same route name, but adding a 1 and a 2 after the name respectively. I did not have a route with more than 58 points, so I wonder if it would split that into 3 routes?

Based upon the discussion in the big Montana thread where Mr. DLH62C had created a couple of routes to test the 50 shaping or via point limit of the Montana, I decided to try something similar with the 350, to see how it would handle things.

I used DLH62C's 52ViaPoint route and deleted some of his points and added more of my own, not that that really matters.

What I learned is that the 350LM appears to have a 29 via point limit in a route, BUT the interesting thing it does is that if you put a larger than 29 via point route onto the unit, and tell it to navigate, it will tell you that the route exceeds 29 via points and then automagically split it into 2 routes, keeping the same route name, but adding a 1 and a 2 after the name respectively. I did not have a route with more than 58 points, so I wonder if it would split that into 3 routes?

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That is an interesting behavior on the 350LM, and a capability that I wish the Montana series had (and which the Montana clearly lacks, as demonstrated by testing that I summarized in Post #8655 under the New Garmin Montana thread).

Rocky TFS was kind enough to send me one of his route files that had 911points, including 464 via points in it, which I named Rocky911pts. I imported it into BaseCamp, ran a re-calc for no particular reason, then pushed it to the 350. After disconnecting the 350 from the PC and powering it up, the following message dialog appeared:

"Rocky911pts has more than 29 via points. Route was split into 16 trips." with an OK button.

So, I said OK and proceeded into the trip planner to view the results. It appeared to have only split it into 13 routes. The 13th route ended at a point which was not all the way to the end of the BaseCamp version I pushed. (Rocky, 2_ELHill2ElkMtnRd 53147 was as far as it got; 53220 is the final point in the BaseCamp version). So, of 911 points, only 838 got in.

So, I thought that perhaps with the addition of this route maybe I had exceeded some limit within the 350, so I deleted the 13 routes, and all of the other routes I had in the unit already, and then pushed Rocky911pts back onto it, to see what would happen.

After disconnecting the 350 from the PC and powering it up, the following message dialog appeared:

"Rocky911pts has more than 29 via points. Route was split into 16 trips." with an OK button. (exact same as before)

So, I said OK and proceeded into the trip planner to view the results. This time, there were only 12 routes! And the last one ended with a destination flag at 2_ELHill2ElkMtnRd 53117 so it got 30 fewer points than the first time I pushed the route to the unit. So, of 911 points, only 808 got in.

What this tells me is that above some unknown number of points, the 350 drops the last X number of points from the last route when it takes one that has too many points and splits it into multiple routes. Further, the number of points dropped can vary.

If I get a chance, I may experiment by deleting points until I find the number of points that always makes it into the unit reliably.

Additionally, even though I am in New England, and the start of the trip was in Arizona, when I selected one of the 12 or 13 and said GO,the 350 routed me to the first point in the route, which is certainly convenient.